Is It Time to Bag Baghdad?

[bemildred]

Some useful bits, a lot of "we are not yet totally screwed" babble.

It was a trick question, for I would argue that effectiveness brings its own legitimacy. The best way for the occupation force in Iraq to establish legitimacy would have been to get a reputation for delivering everything from water and electricity to education and health care. U.S. troops needed to show Iraqis some benefit arising from Uncle Sam's presence in their country.

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Because of the insurgency, Marr says, Baghdad is cut off from much of the rest of the country, so the capital can provide only limited assistance to other parts of the nation. What's needed is progress toward a federal system that replaces the highly centralized model used by Saddam Hussein.

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DISMAL NUMBERS. Take a look at some of the data. Oil production of 2.1 million barrels a day remains below the prewar level of 2.9 million barrels, according to Brookings Institution data. Exports of oil, a critical revenue source, currently are 1.3 million a day, a sharp drop from the prewar level of 2.1 million barrels, Brookings says.

Average electricity production in May was 3,700 megawatts, well below the prewar level of 4,400 megawatts, partly because capacity is turned off so frequently. The U.S. and Iraqi officials "need to put more emphasis on capacity and services," stresses Marr. "The garbage has got to be collected."

MSN

[mike_c]

1. it was never about Iraq or the Iraqi people....

The invasion and occupation of Iraq has always been about the confluence of Bush's silly obsession with Saddam Hussein and the neo-con's obsession with global hegemony. They never gave a rat's buttocks about improving the lot of Iraqis, and any noises they made about that were simply to cover the transfer of huge amounts of money from the U.S. Treasury to the MIC in the form of "rebuilding contracts."